Killing The Right To Die Gives Life To Kevorkian

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The high court ruled unanimously that Americans do not have a constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide, but the justices gave back to the states the right of legislators to decide if doctors should be allowed to help patients die.

Five of the justices also wrote opinions that refused to rule out the possibility that they might find constitutional protection for the so-called ''right to die'' in some future case.

That's enough to cause Dr. K to break out the champagne. In handing the matter back to the states, the Supremes put the fight back into the arena where Dr. Jack's victory record has been 100 percent.

Kevorkian repeatedly and famously has broken Michigan's ban on physician-assisted suicide. Juries repeatedly have let him walk. This has left him willing and available to help even more of the terminally ill find an express trip to the Happy Hunting Grounds.

Kevorkian has succeeded in his strange crusade by forcing the issue. His ''patients,'' as he calls them, or ''victims,'' as prosecutors call them, put human faces - deeply suffering human faces - on the problem. It is one thing to write a law that applies to all cases. It is quite another to have to face the heart-rending circumstances involved in specific cases.

That's the jury's job. So far, Kevorkian's lawyers have not had a terribly difficult time persuading jurors to put themselves into the shoes of the dying and their families. In this case, more than most, even the members of the high court found the issues hitting close to home. We all have to die sometime, and each of the justices has witnessed the ravages of prolonged death in his or her family and other loved ones.

The high court's divisions reflect the rest of the nation's ambivalence. On one side are terminally ill people and their families pleading for the right to die with dignity. On the other are voices just as persuasively crying out for the sanctity of human life and the dangers of a slippery slope toward legalized homicide, physician-assisted or otherwise.

Assisted suicide is banned in 35 states. It is explicitly allowed only in Oregon, where the statute was tangled up in courts almost immediately after it was enacted by voter referendum.

Florida has a case pending that asserts that the state's constitution contains a right to physician-assisted suicide.

But the front lines of the battle also can be seen in Michigan, where Dr. K has gained something of a wacky hero status among those who don't want to slam the door on a quick, peaceful alternative to a slow, agonizing death.

In an opinion by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, the high court stated that it wanted to avoid the fuzzy lines between physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia that are contained in Holland's right-to-die law. But although the Supreme Court's decision may move America further away from euthanasia, it does little to sharpen the fuzziness around the issue of whether patients have the right to request and receive a physician-assisted suicide.

The line probably will get even fuzzier, at least for a while, and maybe that's OK. Most Americans don't have enough information yet to make a sweeping, definitive judgment about this issue.

Polls indicate that most Americans support the right to physician-assisted suicide, at first. But when they are told about the dangers of euthanasia and about the alternative ways to relieve physical and spiritual pain, support falls to a minority.

Our traditionally stoic, scientific and youth-oriented culture has put so much of an emphasis on prolonging life that we only recently have begun to discuss openly and candidly the many ways doctors can relieve pain and otherwise help the terminally ill die with dignity.

The right to die is an issue that defies the extremes. A flat-out ban only encourages the Kevorkians to define policy in their own haphazard way. An all-out constitutional right to die would open the other possibility of the ill having their lives ended for them, without their consent.

The best compromise might be for the states to move slowly and deliberately toward a limited right to die, subject to review by a medical panel. If Kevorkian or any other doctor acted on his own in defiance of the panel, a jury could more easily determine that the doctor's motives had less to do with compassion than with ego.

It is not a perfect compromise, but it comes close. There's enough here to enrage both extremes in this argument, which means that it's probably a pretty good idea.